U.S. patent application number 10/720548 was filed with the patent office on 2004-06-03 for information storage and retrieval.
Invention is credited to Thorpe, Jonathan Richard.
Application Number | 20040107194 10/720548 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 9948633 |
Filed Date | 2004-06-03 |
United States Patent
Application |
20040107194 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Thorpe, Jonathan Richard |
June 3, 2004 |
Information storage and retrieval
Abstract
An information retrieval apparatus for searching a set of
information items. The apparatus comprises a mapping processor, a
graphical user interface, a user control and a search processor.
The mapping processor is operable to generate data representative
of a map of information items from a set of information items. The
map provides the information items with respect to positions in an
array in accordance with a mutual similarity of the information
items, similar information items mapping to similar positions in
the array. The graphical user interface displays a representation
of at least some of the information items, and the user control is
provided for selecting an information item. The search processor is
operable to perform a related search with respect to the user
selected information item by identifying information items which
correspond to neighbouring position in the array with respect to
the array position corresponding to the user selected information
item. Since the search processor is arranged to identify
information items in the search from the array rather than by
searching the information items for some characterising information
feature, such as a keyword, searching for information items of
interest can be effected with a reduced complexity.
Inventors: |
Thorpe, Jonathan Richard;
(US) |
Correspondence
Address: |
FROMMER LAWRENCE & HAUG LLP
745 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
NY
10151
US
|
Family ID: |
9948633 |
Appl. No.: |
10/720548 |
Filed: |
November 24, 2003 |
Current U.S.
Class: |
1/1 ;
707/999.003; 707/E17.065; 707/E17.089; 707/E17.111 |
Current CPC
Class: |
Y10S 707/99933 20130101;
Y10S 707/99932 20130101; G06F 16/3328 20190101; G06F 16/954
20190101; Y10S 707/99935 20130101; G06F 16/35 20190101; Y10S
707/99934 20130101 |
Class at
Publication: |
707/003 |
International
Class: |
G06F 007/00 |
Foreign Application Data
Date |
Code |
Application Number |
Nov 27, 2002 |
GB |
0227692.1 |
Claims
1. An information retrieval apparatus for searching a set of
information items, the apparatus comprising a mapping processor
operable to generate data representative of a map of information
items from a set of information items, the map providing the
information items with respect to positions in an array in
accordance with a mutual similarity of the information items,
similar information items mapping to similar positions in the
array, a graphical user interface for displaying a representation
of at least some of the information items, and a user control for
selecting an information item, wherein a search processor is
operable to perform a related search with respect to the user
selected information item by identifying information items which
correspond to positions in the array which are neighbouring
positions with respect to the array position corresponding to the
user selected information item.
2. An information retrieval apparatus as claimed in claim 1,
wherein the search processor is operable to search the set of
information items in accordance with a search query and to identify
information items corresponding to the search query, and the
mapping processor is operable to generate the map data of
information items identified by the search processor as a result of
the search on the search query.
3. An information retrieval apparatus as claimed in claim 1,
wherein the graphical user interface is operable to display a
representation of at least some of the positions of the array
corresponding to identified information items as an n-dimensional
display array of display points within a display area.
4. An information retrieval apparatus as claimed in claim 1,
wherein the number of dimensions n is two, a position in the array
being defined by x, y co-ordinates.
5. An information retrieval apparatus as claimed in claim 4,
wherein the search processor is operable to perform a related
search with respect to the user selected information item by
identifying information items which correspond to positions in the
array which are within a radius of positions from the array
position corresponding to the user selected information item.
6. An information retrieval apparatus as claimed in claim 1,
wherein the user control is operable to provide the user with a
facility for specifying the number of neighbouring positions in
accordance with a relative similarity of the information items to
be searched by the search processor in the related search, with
respect to the array position of interest.
7. A method for searching a set of information items, the method
comprising generating data representative of a map of information
items from a set of information items, the map providing the
information items with respect to positions in an array in
accordance with a mutual similarity of the information items,
similar information items mapping to similar positions in the
array, displaying a representation of at least some of the
information items, selecting an information item, and performing a
related search with respect to the user selected information item
by identifying information items which correspond to positions in
the array which are neighbouring positions with respect to the
array position corresponding to the user selected information
item.
8. A method as claimed in claim 7, comprising searching the
information items in accordance with a search query, identifying
information items corresponding to the search query, and the
generating the map data comprises generating the map data of
information items identified by the search processor as a result of
the search on the search query.
9. A method as claimed in claim 8, comprising displaying a
representation of at least some of the positions of the array
correspond to identified information items as an n-dimensional
display array of display points within a display area.
10. A method as claimed in claim 9, wherein the number of
dimensions n is two, a position in the array being defined by x, y
co-ordinates.
11. A method as claimed in claim 10, wherein the performing the
related search comprises performing a related search with respect
to the user selected information item by identifying information
items which correspond to positions in the array which are within a
radius of positions from the array position corresponding to the
user selected information item.
12. A method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the user control is
operable to provide the user with a facility for specifying the
radius of positions in accordance with a relative similarity of the
information item to be searched by the search processor in the
related search, with respect to the array position of interest.
13. Computer software having program code for carrying out a method
according to claim 7.
14. A medium for providing program code according to claim 13.
15. A medium according to claim 14, the medium being a storage
medium.
16. A medium according to claim 14, the medium being a transmission
medium.
Description
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
[0001] This invention relates to information retrieval apparatus
and methods.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
[0002] There are many established systems for locating information
(e.g. documents, images, emails, patents, internet content or media
content such as audio/video content) by searching under keywords.
Examples include internet search "engines" such as those provided
by "Google".TM. or "Yahoo".TM. where a search carried out by
keyword leads to a list of results which are ranked by the search
engine in order of perceived relevance.
[0003] However, in a system encompassing a large amount of content,
often referred to as a massive content collection, it can be
difficult to formulate effective search queries to give a
relatively short list of search "hits". For example, at the time of
preparing the present application, a Google search on the keywords
"massive document collection" drew 243000 hits. This number of hits
would be expected to grow if the search were repeated later, as the
amount of content stored across the internet generally increases
with time. Reviewing such a list of hits can be prohibitively
time-consuming.
[0004] In general, some reasons why massive content collections are
not well utilised are:
[0005] a user doesn't know that relevant content exists
[0006] a user knows that relevant content exists but does not know
where it can be located
[0007] a user knows that content exists but does not know it is
relevant
[0008] a user knows that relevant content exists and how to find
it, but finding the content takes a long time
[0009] The paper "Self Organisation of a Massive Document
Collection", Kohonen et al., IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks,
Vol 11, No. 3, May 2000, pages 574-585 discloses a technique using
so-called "self-organising maps" (SOMs). These make use of
so-called unsupervised self-learning neural network algorithms in
which "feature vectors" representing properties of each document
are mapped onto nodes of a SOM.
[0010] In the Kohonen et al paper, a first step is to pre-process
the document text, and then a feature vector is derived from each
pre-processed document. In one form, this may be a histogram
showing the frequencies of occurrence of each of a large dictionary
of words. Each data value (i.e. each frequency of occurrence of a
respective dictionary word) in the histogram becomes a value in an
n-value vector, where n is the total number of candidate words in
the dictionary (43222 in the example described in this paper).
Weighting may be applied to the n vector values, perhaps to stress
the increased relevance or improved differentiation of certain
words.
[0011] The n-value vectors are then mapped onto smaller dimensional
vectors (i.e. vectors having a number of values m (500 in the
example in the paper) which is substantially less than n. This is
achieved by multiplying the vector by an (n.times.m) "projection
matrix" formed of an array of random numbers. This technique has
been shown to generate vectors of smaller dimension where any two
reduced-dimension vectors have much the same vector dot product as
the two respective input vectors. This vector mapping process is
described in the paper "Dimensionality Reduction by Random Mapping:
Fast Similarity Computation for Clustering", Kaski, Proc IJCNN,
pages 413-418, 1998.
[0012] The reduced dimension vectors are then mapped onto nodes
(otherwise called neurons) on the SOM by a process of multiplying
each vector by a "model" (another vector). The models are produced
by a learning process which automatically orders them by mutual
similarity onto the SOM, which is generally represented as a
two-dimensional grid of nodes. This is a non-trivial process which
took Kohonen et al six weeks on a six-processor computer having 800
MB of memory, for a document database of just under seven million
documents. Finally the grid of nodes forming the SOM is displayed,
with the user being able to zoom into regions of the map and select
a node, which causes the user interface to offer a link to an
internet page containing the document linked to that node.
SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT INVENTION
[0013] An object of the present invention is to provide
improvements to information retrieval apparatus, and in particular
to searches performed but such apparatus.
[0014] Various aspects and features of the present invention are
defined in the appended claims.
[0015] According to one aspect of the present invention there is
provided an information retrieval apparatus for searching a set of
information items. The apparatus comprises a mapping processor
operable to generate data representative of a map of information
items from a set of information items. The map provides the
identified information items with respect to positions in an array
in accordance with a mutual similarity of the information items,
similar information items mapping to similar positions in the
array. A graphical user interface is operable to display a
representation of at least some of the information items, and a
user control is provided for selecting an identified information
item. A search processor is operable to perform a related search
with respect to the user selected information item by identifying
information items which correspond to positions in the array which
are neighbouring positions from the array position corresponding to
the user selected information item. Since the search processor is
arranged to identify information items in the search from the array
rather than by searching the information items for some
characterising information feature, such as a keyword, searching
for information items of interest can be effected with a reduced
complexity.
[0016] An advantage provided by embodiments of the invention is
that if a user has identified an information item of interest from
the set of information items, then the user may be provided with
information items, which are strongly correlated. The correlated
information items are provided by identifying items from the
positions within the array which are a predetermined number of
positions from the position in the array corresponding to the
information item of interest.
[0017] In other embodiments, the search processor may be operable
to search the information items in accordance with a search query
and to identify information items corresponding to the search
query. The mapping processor may be operable to generate the map
data of information items identified by the search processor as a
result of the search on the search query. The search processor may
therefore perform an initial search to identify information items
corresponding to a particular search query. As a result of the
search the user may identify an information item of interest.
Accordingly, an embodiment of the invention provides a facility for
the user to search in accordance with a "find related" option,
which identifies information items which correspond to array
positions within a predetermined number of position of the array
position corresponding to the information item of interest. To this
end, the user control may provide a facility for initiating a find
related search.
[0018] The graphical user interface is operable to display a
representation of at least some of the positions of the array
corresponding to identified information items as an n-dimensional
display array of display points within a display area.
Advantageously, to facilitate viewing and navigation the number of
dimensions in the array is two. Accordingly, a position in the
array is defined by x, y co-ordinates. Therefore in some
embodiments, the search processor is operable to perform a related
search by identifying information items which correspond to
positions in the array which are within a circle having a radius of
positions from the array position corresponding to the user
selected information item.
[0019] In order to initiate the related search in accordance with a
relative range of related items required, the user control may be
arranged to provide the user with a facility for specifying the
radius of positions in accordance with a relative similarity of the
information item to be searched by the search processor in the
related search.
[0020] Further respective aspects and features of the invention are
defined in the appended claims.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0021] Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way
of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings in
which:
[0022] FIG. 1 schematically illustrates an information storage and
retrieval system;
[0023] FIG. 2 is a schematic flow chart showing the generation of a
self-organising map (SOM);
[0024] FIGS. 3a and 3b schematically illustrate term frequency
histograms;
[0025] FIG. 4a schematically illustrates a raw feature vector;
[0026] FIG. 4b schematically illustrates a reduced feature
vector;
[0027] FIG. 5 schematically illustrates an SOM;
[0028] FIG. 6 schematically illustrates a dither process;
[0029] FIGS. 7 to 9 schematically illustrate display screens
providing a user interface to access information represented by the
SOM;
[0030] FIG. 10 provides a schematic block diagram of an information
retrieval apparatus according to an embodiment of the
invention;
[0031] FIG. 11 provides an illustrative representation of a
hierarchical arrangement of information items identified in a
search;
[0032] FIG. 12 provides a schematic representation of a screen
providing two areas for displaying different levels of the
hierarchy shown in FIG. 11;
[0033] FIG. 13 provides an illustrative representation of three
types of characterising information features for an example
information item;
[0034] FIG. 14 provides a schematic illustration of a graphical
user interface for forming a search query according to an example
embodiment of the invention;
[0035] FIG. 15 provides a schematic illustration of the formation
of a composite feature vector in accordance with a Boolean AND
operation;
[0036] FIG. 16 illustrates a combination of two feature vectors in
accordance with a Boolean OR operator and a third feature vector in
accordance with a Boolean NOT operator;
[0037] FIG. 17 schematically illustrates a part of the
two-dimensional map of identified information items showing the
results of a search in accordance with the Boolean operators and
feature vectors of FIG. 16;
[0038] FIG. 18(a) and 18(b) provide illustrative bar graphs
providing two examples of colour histograms for two video images
forming a search query, and FIG. 18(c) provides an illustrative bar
graph produced by combining the colour histograms of FIGS. 18(a)
and 18(b);
[0039] FIG. 19 schematically illustrates a display screen providing
a user interface to access information represented by the SOM
corresponding to those illustrated in FIGS. 7 to 9;
[0040] FIG. 20 provides an illustrative representative of an array
of positions in two dimensions with respect to which a related
search is illustrated; and
[0041] FIG. 21 provides a flow diagram illustrating the operation
of the related search performed by the search processor.
DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
[0042] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an information storage and
retrieval system based around a general-purpose computer 10 having
a processor unit 20 including disk storage 30 for programs and
data, a network interface card 40 connected to a network 50 such as
an Ethernet network or the Internet, a display device such as a
cathode ray tube device 60, a keyboard 70 and a user input device
such as a mouse 80. The system operates under program control, the
programs being stored on the disk storage 30 and provided, for
example, by the network 50, a removable disk (not shown) or a
pre-installation on the disk storage 30.
[0043] The storage system operates in two general modes of
operation. In a first mode, a set of information items (e.g.
textual information items) is assembled on the disk storage 30 or
on a network disk drive connected via the network 50 and is sorted
and indexed ready for a searching operation. The second mode of
operation is the actual searching against the indexed and sorted
data.
[0044] The embodiments are applicable to many types of information
items. A non-exhaustive list of appropriate types of information
includes patents, video material, emails, presentations, internet
content, broadcast content, business reports, audio material,
graphics and clipart, photographs and the like, or combinations or
mixtures of any of these. In the present description, reference
will be made to textual information items. The textual information
items may be associated with, or linked to, non-textual items. So,
for example, audio and/or video material may be associated with
"MetaData" which is a textual information item defining that
material in textual terms.
[0045] The information items are loaded onto the disk storage 30 in
a conventional manner. Preferably, they are stored as part of a
database structure which allows for easier retrieval and indexing
of the items, but this is not essential. Once the information and
items have been so stored, the process used to arrange them for
searching is shown schematically in FIG. 2.
[0046] It will be appreciated that the indexed information items
need not be stored on the local disk drive 30. The information
items could be stored on a remote drive connected to the system 10
via the network 50. Alternatively, information may be stored in a
distributed manner, for example at various sites across the
internet. If the information is stored at different internet or
network sites, a second level of information storage could be used
to store locally a "link" (e.g. a Universal Resource Indicator URI)
to the remote information, perhaps with an associated summary,
abstract or metadata associated with that link. So, the remotely
held information would not be accessed unless the user selected the
relevant link (e.g. from the results list 260 to be described
below), although for the purposes of the technical description
which follows, the remotely held information, or the
abstract/summary/metadata, or the link/URI could be considered as
the "information item".
[0047] In other words, a formal definition of the "information
item" is an item from which a feature vector is derived and
processed (see below) to provide a mapping to the SOM. The data
shown in the results list 260 (see below) may be the actual
information item which a user seeks (if it is held locally and is
short enough for convenient display) or may be data representing
and/or pointing to the information item, such as one or more of
metadata, a URI, an abstract, a set of key words, a representative
key stamp image or the like. This is inherent in the operation
"list" which often, though not always, involves listing data
representing a set of items.
[0048] In a further example, the information items could be stored
across a networked work group, such as a research team or a legal
firm. A hybrid approach might involve some information items stored
locally and/or some information items stored across a local area
network and/or some information items stored across a wide area
network. In this case, the system could be useful in locating
similar work by others, for example in a large multi-national
research and development organisation, similar research work would
tend to be mapped to similar output nodes in the SOM (see below).
Or, if a new television programme is being planned, the present
technique could be used to check for its originality by detecting
previous programmes having similar content.
[0049] It will also be appreciated that the system 10 of FIG. 1 is
but one example of possible systems which could use the indexed
information items. Although it is envisaged that the initial
(indexing) phase would be carried out by a reasonably powerful
computer, most likely by a non-portable computer, the later phase
of accessing the information could be carried out at a portable
machine such as a "personal digital assistant" (a term for a data
processing device with display and user input devices, which
generally fits in one hand), a portable computer such as a laptop
computer, or even devices such as a mobile telephone, a video
editing apparatus or a video camera. In general, practically any
device having a display could be used for the information-accessing
phase of operation.
[0050] The processes are not limited to particular numbers of
information items.
[0051] The process of generating a self-organising map (SOM)
representation of the information items will now be described with
reference to FIGS. 2 to 6. FIG. 2 is a schematic flow chart
illustrating a so-called "feature extraction" process followed by
an SOM mapping process.
[0052] Feature extraction is the process of transforming raw data
into an abstract representation. These abstract representations can
then be used for processes such as pattern classification,
clustering and recognition. In this process, a so-called "feature
vector" is generated, which is an abstract representation of the
frequency of terms used within a document.
[0053] The process of forming the visualisation through creating
feature vectors includes:
[0054] Create "document database dictionary" of terms
[0055] Create "term frequency histograms" for each individual
document based on the "document database dictionary"
[0056] Reduce the dimension of the "term frequency histogram" using
random mapping
[0057] Create a 2-dimensional visualisation of the information
space.
[0058] Considering these steps in more detail, each document
(information item) 100 is opened in turn. At a step 110, all "stop
words" are removed from the document. Stop-words are extremely
common words on a pre-prepared list, such as "a", "the", "however",
"about", "and", and "the". Because these words are extremely common
they are likely, on average, to appear with similar frequency in
all documents of a sufficient length. For this reason they serve
little purpose in trying to characterise the content of a
particular document and should therefore be removed.
[0059] After removing stop-words, the remaining words are stemmed
at a step 120, which involves finding the common stem of a word's
variants. For example the words "thrower", "throws", and "throwing"
have the common stem of "throw".
[0060] A "dictionary" of stemmed words appearing in the documents
(excluding the "stop" words) is maintained. As a word is newly
encountered, it is added to the dictionary, and running count of
the number of times the word has appeared in the whole document
collection (set of information items) is also recorded.
[0061] The result is a list of terms used in all the documents in
the set, along with the frequency with which those terms occur.
Words that occur with too high or too low a frequency are
discounted, which is to say that they are removed from the
dictionary and do not take part in the analysis which follows.
Words with too low a frequency may be misspellings, made up, or not
relevant to the domain represented by the document set. Words that
occur with too high a frequency are less appropriate for
distinguishing documents within the set. For example, the term
"News" is used in about one third of all documents in a test set of
broadcast-related documents, whereas the word "football" is used in
only about 2% of documents in the test set. Therefore "football"
can be assumed to be a better term for characterising the content
of a document than "News". Conversely, the word "football" (a
misspelling of "football") appears only once in the entire set of
documents, and so is discarded for having too low an occurrence.
Such words may be defined as those having a frequency of occurrence
which is lower than two standard deviations less than the mean
frequency of occurrence, or which is higher than two standard
deviations above the mean frequency of occurrence.
[0062] A feature vector is then generated at a step 130.
[0063] To do this, a term frequency histogram is generated for each
document in the set. A term frequency histogram is constructed by
counting the number of times words present in the dictionary
(pertaining to that document set) occur within an individual
document. The majority of the terms in the dictionary-will not be
present in a single document, and so these terms will have a
frequency of zero. Schematic examples of term frequency histograms
for two different documents are shown in FIGS. 3a and 3b.
[0064] It can be seen from this example how the histograms
characterise the content of the documents. By inspecting the
examples it is seen that document I has more occurrences of the
terms "MPEG" and "Video" than document 2, which itself has more
occurrences of the term "MetaData". Many of the entries in the
histogram are zero as the corresponding words are not present in
the document.
[0065] In a real example, the actual term frequency histograms have
a very much larger number of terms in them than the example.
Typically a histogram may plot the frequency of over 50000
different terms, giving the histogram a dimension of over 50000.
The dimension of this histogram needs to be reduced considerably if
it is to be of use in building an SOM information space.
[0066] Each entry in the term frequency histogram is used as a
corresponding value in a feature vector representing that document.
The result of this process is a (50000.times.1) vector containing
the frequency of all terms specified by the dictionary for each
document in the document collection. The vector may be referred to
as "sparse" since most of the values will typically be zero, with
most of the others typically being a very low number such as 1.
[0067] The size of the feature vector, and so the dimension of the
term frequency histogram, is reduced at a step 140. Two methods are
proposed for the process of reducing the dimension of the
histogram.
[0068] i) Random Mapping--a technique by which the histogram is
multiplied by a matrix of random numbers. This is a computationally
cheap process.
[0069] ii) Latent Semantic Indexing--a technique whereby the
dimension of the histogram is reduced by looking for groups of
terms that have a high probability of occurring simultaneously in
documents. These groups of words can then be reduced to a single
parameter. This is a computationally expensive process.
[0070] The method selected for reducing the dimension of the term
frequency histogram in the present embodiment is "random mapping",
as explained in detail in the Kaski paper referred to above. Random
mapping succeeds in reducing the dimension of the histogram by
multiplying it by a matrix of random numbers.
[0071] As mentioned above, the "raw" feature vector (shown
schematically in FIG. 4a) is typically a sparse vector with a size
in the region of 50000 values. This can be reduced to size of about
200 (see schematic FIG. 4b) and still preserve the relative
orthogonal characteristics of the feature vector, that is to say,
its relationship such as relative angle (vector dot product) with
other similarly processed feature vectors. This works because
although the number of orthogonal vectors of a particular dimension
is limited, the number of nearly orthogonal vectors is very much
larger.
[0072] In fact as the dimension of the vector increases any given
set of randomly generated vectors are nearly orthogonal to each
other. This property means that the relative direction of vectors
multiplied by this a matrix of random numbers will be preserved.
This can be demonstrated by showing the similarity of vectors
before and after random mapping by looking at their dot
product.
[0073] It can be shown experimentally that by reducing a sparse
vector from 50000 values to 200 values preserves their relative
similarities. However, this mapping is not perfect, but suffices
for the purposes of characterising the content of a document in a
compact way.
[0074] Once feature vectors have been generated for the document
collection, thus defining the collection's information space, they
are projected into a two-dimensional SOM at a step 150 to create a
semantic map. The following section explains the process of mapping
to 2-D by clustering the feature vectors using a Kohonen
self-organising map. Reference is also made to FIG. 5.
[0075] A Kohonen Self-Organising map is used to cluster and
organise the feature vectors that have been generated for each of
the documents.
[0076] A self-organising map consists of input nodes 170 and output
nodes 180 in a two-dimensional array or grid of nodes illustrated
as a two-dimensional plane 185. There are as many input nodes as
there are values in the feature vectors being used to train the
map. Each of the output nodes on the map is connected to the input
nodes by weighted connections 190 (one weight per connection).
[0077] Initially each of these weights is set to a random value,
and then, through an iterative process, the weights are "trained".
The map is trained by presenting each feature vector to the input
nodes of the map. The "closest" output node is calculated by
computing the Euclidean distance between the input vector and
weights associated with each of the output nodes.
[0078] The closest node, identified by the smallest Euclidean
distance between the input vector and the weights associated with
that node is designated the "winner" and the weights of this node
are trained by slightly changing the values of the weights so that
they move "closer" to the input vector. In addition to the winning
node, the nodes in the neighbourhood of the winning node are also
trained, and moved slightly closer to the input vector.
[0079] It is this process of training not just the weights of a
single node, but the weights of a region of nodes on the map, that
allow the map, once trained, to preserve much of the topology of
the input space in the 2-D map of nodes.
[0080] Once the map is trained, each of the documents can be
presented to the map to see which of the output nodes is closest to
the input feature vector for that document. It is unlikely that the
weights will be identical to the feature vector, and the Euclidean
distance between a feature vector and its nearest node on the map
is known as its "quantisation error".
[0081] By presenting the feature vector for each document to the
map to see where it lies yields an x, y map position for each
document. These x, y positions when put in a look up table along
with a document ID can be used to visualise the relationship
between documents.
[0082] Finally, a dither component is added at a step 160, which
will be described with reference to FIG. 6 below.
[0083] A potential problem with the process described above is that
two identical, or substantially identical, information items may be
mapped to the same node in the array of nodes of the SOM. This does
not cause a difficulty in the handling of the data, but does not
help with the visualisation of the data on display screen (to be
described below). In particular, when the data is visualised on a
display screen, it has been recognised that it would be useful for
multiple very similar items to be distinguishable over a single
item at a particular node. Therefore, a "dither" component is added
to the node position to which each information item is mapped. The
dither component is a random addition of .+-.1/2 of the node
separation. So, referring to FIG. 6, an information item for which
the mapping process selects an output node 200 has a dither
component added so that it in fact may be mapped to any map
position around a node 200 within the area 210 bounded by dotted
lines on FIG. 6.
[0084] So, the information items can be considered to map to
positions on the plane of FIG. 6 at node positions other than the
"output nodes" of the SOM process.
[0085] At any time, a new information item can be added to the SOM
by following the steps outlined above (i.e. steps 110 to 140) and
then applying the resulting reduced feature vector to the
"pre-trained" SOM models, that is to say, the set of SOM models
which resulted from the self-organising preparation of the map. So,
for the newly added information item, the map is not generally
"retrained"; instead steps 150 and 160 are used with all of the SOM
models not being amended. To retrain the SOM every time a new
information item is to be added is computationally expensive and is
also somewhat unfriendly to the user, who might grow used to the
relative positions of commonly accessed information items in the
map.
[0086] However, there may well come a point at which a retraining
process is appropriate. For example, if new terms (perhaps new
items of news, or a new technical field) have entered into the
dictionary since the SOM was first generated, they may not map
particularly well to the existing set of output nodes. This can be
detected as an increase in a so-called "quantisation error"
detected during the mapping of newly received information item to
the existing SOM. In the present embodiments, the quantisation
error is compared to a threshold error amount. If it is greater
than the threshold amount then either (a) the SOM is automatically
retrained, using all of its original information items and any
items added since its creation; or (b) the user is prompted to
initiate a retraining process at a convenient time. The retraining
process uses the feature vectors of all of the relevant information
items and reapplies the steps 150 and 160 in full.
[0087] FIG. 7 schematically illustrates a display on the display
screen 60. The display shows a search enquiry 250, a results list
260 and an SOM display area 270.
[0088] In operation, initially, the display area 270 is blank. The
user types a key word search enquiry into the enquiry area 250. The
user then initiates the search, for example by pressing enter on
the keyboard 70 or by using the mouse 80 to select a screen
"button" to start the search. The key words in the search enquiry
area 250 are then compared with the information items in the
database using a standard keyword search technique. This generates
a list of results, each of which is shown as a respective entry 280
in the list area 260. Then the display area 270 displays display
points corresponding to each of the result items.
[0089] Because the sorting process used to generate the SOM
representation tends to group mutually similar information items
together in the SOM, the results for the search enquiry generally
tend to fall in clusters such as a cluster 290. Here, it is noted
that each point on the area 270 corresponds to the respective entry
in the SOM associated with one of the results in the result list
260; and the positions at which the points are displayed within the
area 270 correspond to the array positions of those nodes within
the node array.
[0090] FIG. 8 schematically illustrates a technique for reducing
the number of "hits" (results in the result list). The user makes
use of the mouse 80 to draw a boundary, which in this example is a
rectangular box, 300 around a set of the display points displayed
in area 270. In the results list area 260, only those results
corresponding to points within the boundary 300 are displayed. If
these results turn out not to be of interest, the user may draw
another boundary encompassing a different set of display
points.
[0091] It is noted that the results area 260 displays list entries
for those results for which display points are displayed within the
boundary 300 and which satisfied the search criteria in the word
search area 250. The boundary 300 may encompass other display
positions corresponding to populated nodes in the node array, but
if these did not satisfy the search criteria they will not be
displayed and so will not form part of the subset of results shown
in the list 260.
[0092] FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment of the present
invention.
[0093] Referring to FIG. 9, step 920, when the Self Organising Map
SOM is generated it has no labels, (unlike the SOM of Kohonen).
Users require labels to give guidance for exploring the map. In
embodiments of the invention the labels are automatically generated
to match the particular needs of the users. Users generate a list
of results of a search as described with reference to FIG. 7 and/or
FIG. 8. A label is automatically dynamically generated according to
the results and used to label the clusters of display points in the
area 270.
[0094] Cross-Cluster Association/Assisted Keyword Search
[0095] An example embodiment of the present invention will now be
described with reference to FIGS. 10, 11 and 12.
[0096] In FIG. 10 a data repository 400 containing a database of
information items is connected by a data communications network 410
to a search processor 404 and to a mapping processor 412. The
mapping processor is connected to a user control 414 and to a
display processor 416. An output of the display processor 416 is
received by a graphical user interface 418, which interfaces to a
display 420. The display processor 416 is operable to process data
from the mapping processor for display on the display screen.
[0097] The data repository 400 may be separately located to the
mapping processor 412. Correspondingly the search processor may be
separately located from the data repository 400, mapping processor
412 and those parts shown in FIG. 10, which are utilised for
displaying information, which are the display processor 416, the
graphical user interface 418 and the display 420. Alternatively the
mapping processor 412, the search processor 404 and the display
processor 416 may be implemented in a form of software modules for
execution on a general purpose computer such as that shown in FIG.
1. However it will be appreciated that the mapping processor, the
search processor and the display processor may be produced and
located separately.
[0098] The embodiment shown in FIG. 10 operates substantially as
the storage and retrieval data processor as illustrated in FIG. 1
in combination with the illustrations in FIGS. 7, 8 and 9. FIGS. 7,
8 and 9 provide example illustrations of how information items are
searched with respect to a search query and how the results of the
search are displayed. Correspondingly, the embodiment shown in FIG.
10 is arranged to receive a search query, for example a keyword
from the user control 414. In response to the keyword the search is
conducted by the search processor 404 to identify in combination
with the mapping processor a set of x, y positions in the array
corresponding to information items identified as a result of the
search. For example, for a 40.times.40 array of nodes there are
1600 positions in a square two-dimensional array. As explained
above the search processor searches the information items in
accordance with a search query. The search by the search processor
results in a set of x, y positions for information items identified
by the search processor as corresponding to the search query. The
x, y positions of the results of the search are received by the
mapping processor 412.
[0099] In one embodiment, the search processor 404 may be arranged
to search the information items and to generate search results,
which identify information items, which correspond to a search
query. The mapping processor 412 may then receive data representing
the results of the search identifying information items
corresponding to the search query. The mapping processor then
generates the x, y co-ordinates of the positions in the array
corresponding to the identified information items.
[0100] The mapping processor 412 is operable to identify clusters
of information items at a first global level by conducting a
k-means clustering process. The k-means clustering process
identifies the clusters and position of the clusters within the
array. The k-means clustering process is disclosed in book entitled
"Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition," by Christopher M.
Bishop, pp 187-188, Oxford University Press. A further disclosure
of the k-means clustering algorithm is disclosed in the web
address:
[0101] http://cne.gmu.edu/modules/dau/stat/clustgalgs/clust5
bdy.html
[0102] As illustrated in FIG. 11 the results of the search on the
keyword "show" might identify positions in the array corresponding
to information items which have the word "show" as part of their
metadata. Therefore, the result of performing the k-means
clustering algorithm on the array identifies for example three
clusters of information items which are "quiz", "game" and "DIY".
These clusters of information items form a first hierarchical level
h_level1. The display processor 416 receives data from the mapping
processor 412 corresponding to the clustering of information items
at the first hierarchical level h_level1. The display processor 416
processes the first hierarchical level of data so as to provide
data representing a two-dimensional display of this first
hierarchical h_level1. The data generated by the display processor
416 is fed to a graphical user interface 418 for display in a first
area 430 on the display screen 420 as shown in FIG. 12.
[0103] In some embodiments a further operation may be performed by
the mapping processor 412 to refine the identification of clusters
using the k-means algorithm. The further operation is known as
"k-means clustering and pruning". The known k-means clustering
process identifies groups of array positions for information items
identified in the search results which denote similar information
items. A further pruning process of determining whether adjacent
sub-clusters of x, y positions of result items are part of the same
main cluster is then performed. If a distance between the centres
of two sub-clusters is less than a threshold value, then the two
sub-clusters are deemed to be part of the same main cluster. The
pruning is performed iteratively in known manner until the
clustering is stable.
[0104] The mapping processor 412 operates to perform a further
analysis of each of the clusters of information items identified at
the first hierarchical level h_level1. In order to provide a user
with a facility for examining the clusters of information items
individually and identifying further clusters within those
information items the mapping processor 412 forms a further
hierarchical level. Accordingly, for each cluster of information
items the k-means clustering algorithm is performed for that
cluster to identify further clusters within that first hierarchical
level of information items. So for example, as illustrated in FIG.
11 if the k-means algorithm is performed on the "quiz" cluster then
three further clusters are identified at a second hierarchical
level h_level2.
[0105] As illustrated for the first hierarchical level each cluster
is labelled in accordance with a keyword. The keyword is identified
by finding the most common word which each of the information items
within the cluster have present in the metadata associated with
that information item. So for example in the first hierarchical
level three clusters are identified by the words "quiz", "game" and
"DIY".
[0106] In a corresponding manner to the labelling of the clusters
of the first hierarchical level h_level1 a keyword is identified
for each of the clusters in the second hierarchical level h_level2.
Accordingly, the three clusters are labelled "the chair", "wipeout"
and "enemy within". Each of these three clusters comprises
different episodes of a quiz show.
[0107] As will be appreciated a further iteration of the analysis
of each cluster can be performed. This is achieved by performing
the k-means algorithm on each of the clusters identified at the
second hierarchical level h_level2. As illustrated in FIG. 11 the
"wipeout" information cluster is further analysed using the k-means
clustering algorithm. However, at the third hierarchical level
h_level3 only individual information items are revealed and so as
illustrated in FIG. 11 the third hierarchical level h_level3
identifies individual episodes of "wipeout".
[0108] The mapping processor 412 is therefore operable to identify
clusters of information items at different hierarchical levels.
Data representing each of the hierarchical levels is fed to the
display processor 416. Accordingly, in combination with the
graphical user interface 418 a second area may be displayed on the
display 420 which may for example correspond to the second
hierarchical level h_level2. Thus, using the zoom control a user
may zoom into the clusters displayed in the first hierarchical
level h_level1. The zoom control may be operated using the user
control 414. Accordingly, zooming into a particular cluster can
have an effect of revealing the second hierarchical level of
information items h_level2. Alternatively, the user control 414 may
be used to select a "current view" area within the first area.
Accordingly, the second display is illustrated with respect to the
clusters identified within the "quiz" cluster identified at the
first hierarchical level shown in the first display h_level1.
[0109] A further advantage provided by embodiments of the present
invention is an arrangement in which the second or a subsequent
level, which is displayed in a second or subsequent area of the
display, may be provided with indicators of other clusters. The
indicators direct the user to alternative clusters to the keyword
associated with the cluster being viewed at a lower hierarchical
level. Thus the clusters which are being illustrated at a lower
hierarchical level within the second display area 440, will have
alternative clusters to the cluster being viewed. For example, in
FIG. 12 in the first display area 430 the first hierarchical level
illustrates the three clusters of "quiz", "game" and "DIY". Since
the zoom control is used to zoom in at the "quiz" cluster, then the
second display area 440 provides a display of the clusters within
the "quiz" cluster which are "the chair", "enemy within" and
"wipeout". However, alternative keywords to the "quiz" cluster are
"DIY", "horror" and "game" as illustrated in the first area.
Accordingly, arrows 444, 446 and 448 are provided to direct the
user to clusters of information items which are at the same
hierarchical level as the "quiz" cluster being displayed in the
second display area. Accordingly, if the user wishes then to review
a different cluster from the first hierarchical level to reveal the
clusters in the second hierarchical level, then the user can use
the arrows to navigate to the alternative clusters within the first
hierarchical level. Furthermore, advantageously the arrows are
labelled with the keyword label for the cluster, which appears in
the first hierarchical level. In other embodiments, in order to
provide the user with an illustration of the relative number of
items in the cluster then this number is shown alongside the
keyword associated with the direction-indicating arrow. The user
control and the display may be arranged to indicate this number
when the mouse pointer MP passes or is positioned over the
indicating arrow.
[0110] A further advantageous feature of some embodiments is to
provide a list of additional keywords, that is to say the keywords
associated with second level clusters within first level clusters.
As illustrated in FIG. 12 for a clustering providing the further
first level cluster of "horror" then the additional words
corresponding to the clusters at the second level within that first
level cluster "horror" are generated when a mouse pointer MP is
positioned over the arrow associated with "horror". As a result the
user is provided with a very efficient illustration of the content
of the information items associated with the first level clusters
without having to view those clusters within the second display
area 440. As illustrated in FIG. 12 the display area may further
include control icons shown generally as 450 which are used to both
review and navigate around the information items appearing in the
first display area 430.
[0111] Multi-modal Refined Search
[0112] Another example embodiment of the present invention will now
be described with reference to FIGS. 10 in combination with FIGS.
13 to 17. FIG. 13 provides an illustrative representation of the
type of characterising information features, which are stored in
association with an information item. For example, the information
item may be a section of audio/video data from a television
programme. In the current example the programme provides highlights
of a football match. Accordingly, the data item includes video data
460 and audio data. Associated with the audio data is audio
metadata illustrated within a box 462. The audio metadata describes
the content and the type of audio signals associated with the video
data. For the present example the audio data includes "music",
"commentary", "crowd noise" but may include one or more other types
of metadata indicating the type of audio signals. In addition to
the video data and audio data the information items may also
include other metadata which describe the contents or attributes of
the video and audio data. For the present example metadata is
illustrated within a box 464 and is shown to include a description
of the content of the video programme. It is the words contained in
this metadata which are used to build a feature vector from which
the SOM is generated. However, in other embodiments of the
invention the set of information items contained in the data
repository 400 may be searched with respect to the audio data that
is the audio metadata 462 or on the video data. To this end a
representative key stamp may be generated from the frames of video
data 460.
[0113] The representative key stamp RKS is generated by forming a
colour histogram of each of the frames of video data. The colour
histogram for all or selected video frames are combined and then
normalised to produce a composite colour histogram, which is
illustrated in representative form as a bar graph 466 in FIG. 13.
The composite colour histogram is then compared with the colour
histogram for each of the video frames. A distance is determined
between the colour histogram for each frame and the composite
colour histogram by summing a distance of each of the columns of
the colour histogram for each video frame with the corresponding
columns of the composite histogram. The representative key stamp
RKS having a colour histogram which has the smallest distance with
respect to the composite colour histogram is selected. For the
programme describing a football match, then correspondingly the
representative key stamp produced would be most likely to be a
video image of a part of a football pitch, which is illustrated by
the representative key stamp RKS shown in FIG. 13.
[0114] In other embodiments an RKS may be generated for each
information item from the video frames, by any of the following
methods:
[0115] A user may select the frame, which is considered to be the
most representative frame corresponding to the overall content of
the information item. This method may provide improved reliability,
since the user ensures that the video frame is selected which
subjectively represents an information item. However this is more
time consuming.
[0116] A user may select the first frame or a random frame within
an information item. This may be a less reliable method for
selecting an appropriate RKS.
[0117] Other methods for processing the video frames and selecting
an RKS based on the content of the image frames are envisaged.
[0118] Embodiments of the present invention can provide a facility
for producing a refined search based upon selected characterising
information features. In one embodiment the search processor 142 is
operable to search those information items which were identified in
a first search in accordance with either an item of metadata, a
video image or audio data. In alternative embodiments the search
may be conducted just on metadata or just video data or only audio
data or any combination thereof. To facilitate the formation of a
search query, the display device 420 shown in FIG. 10 may include a
further graphical display provided by the graphical user interface
418 which is illustrated in FIG. 14.
[0119] In FIG. 14 a first row 470 within a display area 472
provides a user with a facility for selecting query information
based on metadata. Accordingly, if an image representative key
stamp from an information item is placed within the window in this
row then metadata associated with this information item (as
illustrated in FIG. 13) will be added to the search query.
Accordingly, one or more representative key stamps from different
information items may be introduced into the search query for the
characterising information feature of type metadata.
Correspondingly, in the second row 474 video frames, which have
been selected by the user, are introduced to form part of the
search query. For example, a user may browse a particular item of
video data and select a frame of interest. The user may then place
this image frame in the row 474 to form part of the search query.
The user may introduce one or more video frames.
[0120] A user may also select an information item to be searched in
accordance with the audio data within that information item.
Accordingly, the third row within the display area 476 provides a
facility for a user to introduce a representative image of that
information item to identify within the row for audio data that the
search query is to include audio data corresponding to that
information item within the search query.
[0121] In addition to selecting information items to be searched in
accordance with the type of the characterising information
features, embodiments of the present invention also provide a
facility for searching in accordance with Boolean operators between
the selected information items. As illustrated in FIG. 14, the
information items which have been selected for a metadata search,
are to be searched in accordance with an "AND" operator as shown
between the first two columns 478, 480. However, the search query
between the first metadata and the first video image items in the
search query are connected by an "OR" operator. The two items to be
searched for the video image data are connected by an "AND"
operator. Also the information item which is to be searched in
accordance with audio data is to be searched in the search query in
accordance with a "NOT" operator.
[0122] Having built the search query, the search processor 404 is
operable to search the information items identified from a keyword
search in accordance with the search query built from the selection
made by the user and illustrated in FIG. 14. The search processor
searches the information items differently in dependence upon the
type of characterising information features selected as will be
explained in the following paragraphs:
[0123] For the example of searching for characterising information
features such as metadata, then for any information item the
feature vector for that information item generated from the
metadata can be used to identify a point in the two-dimensional
array corresponding to that feature vector. Accordingly,
information items within a predetermined distance of that
identified position in the array can be returned as a result of the
search query. However, if more than one information item has been
selected within the metadata search row then a search query must be
built in a way which searches both of these items in accordance
with the Boolean operator selected.
[0124] For the example of the "AND" Boolean operator then the
feature vector for each information item is combined to form a
composite feature vector as illustrated in FIG. 15. To this end,
the values associated with each of the words within the metadata
are added together and normalised to produce the composite feature
vector. Thus as illustrated in FIG. 15 the two feature vectors A, B
associated with the user selected metadata which have their
representative key stamps illustrated in row 470 and columns 478 to
480 and the metadata search query line 470 are combined together to
form the feature vector C. The search processor may then take the
feature vector C and compare this with the SOM. Having identified
the closest position in the array corresponding to the composite
feature vector C information items within a predetermined number of
positions within the array from that identified position in the
array are returned as a result of the search query.
[0125] For the example of the Boolean "OR" operator for a
corresponding metadata search then for the first feature vector A
and the second feature B the corresponding position in the array
for those feature vectors are identified. As such, the result of
the search query is to return all the information items within a
predetermined number of positions of each of those identified
points in the array. This is illustrated in FIGS. 16 and 17. In
FIG. 17 positions in the two-dimensional array corresponding to
feature vector A and corresponding to feature vector B are
identified. As illustrated in FIG. 17 positions in the array within
a predetermined radius of the array positions for A and B can then
be returned as identified as a result of the search query. However,
if a further feature vector C is identified in the search query and
a "NOT" Boolean operator is specified for this further feature
vector then again the position in the array corresponding to
feature vector C is identified. Accordingly, again the information
items within the predetermined radius of array positions from C may
be identified. However, as a result of the "NOT" operator any
mutually inclusive array positions identified between the radius
from the array positions for the feature vectors C and A and B are
excluded from the results of the search. Accordingly, the search
processor is arranged to return the information items corresponding
to the positions in the array produced from A or B but not C.
[0126] For the second line in the search query corresponding to
video image data being the characterising feature of the search,
then the search processor is operable to search the video data for
representative key stamps corresponding to the selected user video
image. To this end, the colour histogram associated with the user
selected video image is compared with the colour histogram for each
of the representative key stamps associated with the information
items. A distance is calculated between the colour histogram of the
representative key stamp of each of the information items and the
colour histogram of the user specified video image. This is
effected by calculating a distance between each of the columns
representing the colour components of that image and summing these
distances for each column. The array position corresponding to the
information item having the least distance between the colour
histogram of the user selected video image and that of the
representative key stamp corresponding to that array position is
identified. Again the results of the query would be to return
information items having array positions within a predetermined
number of positions from the identified array position.
[0127] For the case of Boolean operators then again a colour
histogram can be formed by combining the colour histograms for two
images selected and specified for the Boolean "AND" operator. The
process of forming a composite colour histogram is illustrated in
FIG. 18. The colour histograms for the first and second user
selected images provided in row 474 and the columns 478, 480 of the
video image search query tow within the display area illustrated in
FIG. 14 are combined by averaging the values in each of the columns
of the colour histogram. Thus, the two colour histograms
illustrated in FIGS. 18a and 18b are combined to form the colour
histogram formed in FIG. 18c. It is this colour histogram which is
searched with respect to the representative key stamps of the
information items which are to be searched.
[0128] For the example of audio data then the search processor may
form a feature vector from the audio metadata associated with the
selected information item. For example, the audio metadata may
identify harmonics present in the audio signal, speech data or
whether there is music present within the audio signals represented
by the audio metadata. In addition, the metadata may identify
whether a particular speaker is present on the audio signal such as
Tony Blair or a particular commentator, such as John Motson.
Accordingly, again a feature vector may be generated from the
selected audio data which may be searched with respect to other
feature vectors associated in particular with audio data. In a
corresponding way to that explained above, the Boolean operators
may be used to combine a search for more than one audio metadata
type. For the example of the "AND" operator the audio metadata
items may be combined to produce a composite metadata item.
Searching for a corresponding information item which has a feature
vector which is closest to this composite item will identify an
information item. The search processor may then recover information
items within a predetermined number of positions within the array
for both metadata items when an "OR" operator is specified. Again
the "NOT" Boolean operator will serve to exclude information items
returned having matching audio data from the results of the search
query.
[0129] The embodiments of the present invention have been provided
for refining a search from identified information items. However it
will be appreciated that in other embodiments the search query
formed by the display illustrated in FIG. 14 and the application of
that search query with respect to metadata, video image data and
audio data may be provided to search the entire set of information
within the data repository 400.
[0130] Related Search
[0131] As explained above according to an example embodiment of the
invention, information items according to a search query built
using the graphical user interface shown in FIG. 14, may be
searched by identifying items which neighbour a particular array
position identified by the search query. However, in other example
embodiments a related search may be made from an information item
identified for any reason. Typically however, a search according to
a particular keyword will yield a set of identified information
items. From these information items the user may determine that one
of these is of particular interest. Then a related search may
provide items which have some correlation to this information
according to the SOM. This is achieved by identifying information
items which correspond to array positions within, for example, a
predetermined radius from the array position corresponding to the
information item of interest.
[0132] FIG. 19 provides a schematic illustration of how the search
processor 404 may perform a "find related" search. A user may
consider that a particular information item is of interest. For
example, FIG. 19 reproduces the representation of the graphical
user interface shown in FIGS. 7, 8 and 9. Consider that the results
of an earlier search reveals the arrangement of identified
positions in the array illustrated as before by black dots, and the
user has found a particular information item corresponding to a
position 490 within the array to be of interest. To effect a
related search the user arranges the mouse pointer MP to be
positioned over the position of interest 490 and engages a related
search through a menu option, which for example may appear
automatically. Upon engaging a related search, the search processor
404 identifies information items corresponding to array positions
within a predetermined number of neighbouring positions from the
position of interest 490. For example, the search processor 404 may
identify information items corresponding to array positions within
a square box 492, the box being formed from plus and minus two
positions in the x and y directions. Alternatively, the search
processor 404 may identify information items corresponding to array
positions within a circle having a predetermined radius R of one
position on the diagonal from the array position 490 of the
selected information item of interest.
[0133] Having identified the information items corresponding to the
related array positions, the characterising information features
for each identified information item may be displayed within the
display area 260, shown in FIG. 19.
[0134] In some embodiments the number of array positions with
respect to which related information items may be identified may be
altered by the user using the user control in accordance with a
relative sensitivity with which the related search is to be carried
out. Accordingly, the number of predetermined neighbouring
positions identified in the related search may vary. This may be
effected by changing the radius R of the circle 494 or the size of
the box 492.
[0135] Performing a related search based on the array rather than
by searching the information items for some characterising
information feature, such as a keyword search, provides a facility
for searching for information items of interest which can reduce
the computational complexity with regard to searching for keywords.
The related search operation using the array is facilitated by a
property of the SOM, which tends to position information items,
which are similar at similar positions within the array.
Accordingly, information items which have neighbouring positions
within the array to the position corresponding to the information
item of interest will be correlated with respect to that
information item. Therefore, retrieving information items which
correspond to these neighbouring positions will reveal a focussed
search for items which are more likely to be consistent with a
users search requirements.
[0136] Summary Flow Diagram for Related Search
[0137] A flow diagram summarising the operation of the search
processor when performing the related search is shown in FIG. 21.
The steps of the related search process are summarised as
follows:
[0138] S.2: Although the first step in the operation could be
generating data representative of a map of information items from a
set of information items according to a user specified search
query, steps S.2 to S.10 may be omitted if the related search is to
be performed from a user identified information item. The map
provides the information items with respect to positions in an
array in accordance with a mutual similarity of the information
items, similar information items mapping to similar positions in
the array.
[0139] S.4: The information items are mapped onto positions in a
2-D array from the x, y array positions identified in the search or
by the mapping processor.
[0140] S.8: Map data is generated from the x, y positions of array
positions within the array for display.
[0141] S.10: A representation of at least some of the information
items is display as the 2-D array according to the map data.
[0142] S.12: A user selects an information item, which is of
interest.
[0143] S.14: A user may have specified the conditions by which a
related search is to be performed. The user may have identified the
number of neighbours or a radius from the array position of the
information item of interest.
[0144] S.16: If the user has not specified a particular requirement
for the related search, the search processor automatically
identifies a number of predetermined neighbouring positions and
returns information items corresponding to these positions.
[0145] S.18: If the user has specified a particular requirement for
the related search, the search processor identifies neighbouring
positions according to the user specification and returns
information items corresponding to these positions.
[0146] Various modifications may be made to the embodiments
described above without departing from the scope of the present
invention. Various aspects and features of the present invention
are defined in the appended claims.
* * * * *
References